Free Republic

ABID HUSSAN took one step inside the foul-smelling prison cell and began to shake. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead and behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. The 45-year-old shopkeeper pointed to the electric cables hanging from the ceiling where President Saddam Hussein’s security police would torture him three times a day. People tried to elbow their way inside this impossibly small 6ft by 4ft torture chamber. They were anxious to sift through the documents carpeting the floor to see if it gave a clue as to what became of a loved one, or friend, who had been dragged inside here...

Coalition Forces continue the hunt for Izzat Ibrihim Al Duri, long-time Saddam Hussein associate, in spite of the latest Baath party announcement of his death. Coalition officials question the validity of the Baath party claim, and a reward of up to $10 million remains for information leading to Al-Duri’s capture or his gravesite. There have been conflicting reports regarding Al-Duri. On Nov. 12 a Baathist website reported his death, but the author of this site has made false claims in the past. Another website, also claiming to be associated with the former Baath Party, apologized for the false reporting of...

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide a case on the constitutionality of the new lethal injection drug combinations that some states are using for executions. The court agreed to hear a challenge to Oklahoma’s choice of drugs even though on Jan. 15 the court declined to stay an execution there, using the same contested drugs. In April, Oklahoma botched the execution of Clayton D. Lockett, who appeared to gasp and struggle after the drugs were administered before he finally died in the execution chamber of a heart attack.

The head of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has ordered the execution of 56 members of the militant group following a defeat in northern Iraq, a Kurdish official told Al Arabiya News Channel. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took the decision after the Islamist militants defeat in Kober...

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is urging Pakistan’s leader to stop the execution of convicts and re-impose a moratorium on the death penalty. […] In the wake of the Pakistani Taliban school massacre on Dec. 16 that killed 149 people, most of them students, the government reinstated the death penalty and has already executed six people. …

California’s death row houses 749 inmates, including 64 convicted in Orange County. From serial killers to child murderers, here is a closer look at 10 of the most notorious death row cases from O.C., as well as some facts about Death Row in California: ...

Imagine being told you are going to die in a month. Then it's a few hours. Then another month. You may be set free or you may be killed, and it all depends on events that are completely out of your control. How long could you stand it?

IS militants have controlled Mosul since June 10, the second day of a major offensive that saw jihadist fighters seize swathes of land in five Iraqi provinces. They have used the city, Iraq's second largest, as a de facto capital for the Iraqi half of the "caliphate" which their leadership proclaimed in June and also includes large parts of Syria. "After going after the ethnic and religious minorities, they are now hunting down Sunni members of civil society groups and anyone remotely connected with the government," Edwar said. She said IS was probably trying to sow maximum fear among the...

The families of two journalists beheaded by Islamic State jihadists were both warned by US government officials they could face prosecution if they raised a ransom for their release. The recent executions of James Foley and Steven Sotloff by Islamic State (IS) extremists triggered worldwide revulsion and Washington has since declared it is at war with the radicals. The United States has a policy of never paying ransoms, contending that doing so would endanger Americans all over the world. Late Friday, a spokesman for Sotloff's family said the murdered journalist's parents were told by a White House counterterrorism official last...

Concerned that dozens of low-wage workers who built the maze of tunnels from the Gaza strip into Israel might reveal the locations to enemy forces, the Hamas leadership ordered their execution. Hamas spokesman Khaled Mashal justified this seemingly ungrateful reward as "a necessary precaution. There are those who would say that the measures we took to prevent these diggers' knowledge of the tunnels' locations ought to be sufficient. Yes, the workers were blindfolded before being led to and from where they were told to dig making it exceedingly improbable that any of them could lead an Israeli to a tunnel...

History repeating itself, Russians ethnic cleansing in conquered lands, people of Crimea forced to be Russian by gun point and executions by Russian Special Forces.

Killing people is a brutal and messy business and if Americans can't deal with that, they shouldn't be condemning people to death, a top federal judge says. In a strongly worded dissent in an Arizona lethal-injection case, Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals, calls the current system "inherently flawed" and says states that want to execute inmates should return to more "primitive—and foolproof—methods" of execution, NBC reports. "The guillotine is probably best but seems inconsistent with our national ethos. And the electric chair, hanging and the gas chamber are each subject to occasional mishaps,"...

"Lawyers for two men on death row in Oklahoma say the state has informed them it has a new execution protocol that would allow it to choose from any of five lethal injections. The change comes days after the state revealed that it had been unable to obtain the chemicals for its existing protocol: pentobarbital and vecuronium — prompting a court to delay the executions of convicted murderers Charles Warner and Clayton Lockett for a month. In the revised protocol given to the men's defense team, prison officials outline five possible one-drug and three-drug injections it could use to kill...

• The executions of Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner were put off until April 22 and April 29. The state has had difficulty finding the ingredients of the cocktail used to execute prisoners. OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma court on Tuesday rescheduled a pair of executions set for this week and next so state prison officials will have more time to find a supply of drugs for the lethal injections. The decision came in a lawsuit in which two inmates had sought more information about the drugs that would be used to execute them later this month. The inmates had...

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An Oklahoma court on Tuesday rescheduled a pair of executions set for this week and next so state prison officials will have more time to find a supply of drugs for the lethal injections. The decision came in a lawsuit in which two inmates had sought more information about the drugs that would be used to execute them later this month. The inmates had sought a stay of their executions, but the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals said that request was moot because the state Department of Corrections doesn't have enough drugs on hand to carry...

Gov. Jay Inslee is calling a moratorium on executions while he is governor. “Equal justice under the law is the state’s primary responsibility,” Inslee said during a news conference Tuesday morning. “And in death penalty cases, I’m not convinced equal justice is being served.” Inslee said there was “too much at stake” in death penalty cases in what he termed an “imperfect system.” “During my term we will not be executing people,” Inslee said. Inslee cited the high cost of trials and appeals, the apparent randomness that death penalties are pursued and concerns that executions do not deter crime as...

North Korea publicly executed around 80 people earlier this month, many for watching smuggled South Korean TV shows, a South Korean newspaper reported Monday. -excerpt- In the eastern port of Wonsan, the authorities gathered 10,000 people in a sports stadium to watch the execution of eight people by firing squad, the source quoted one eyewitness as saying.

A federal judge has declined to order the U.S. government to turn over documents detailing its legal rationale for the targeted killings of people thought to be terrorists, including American citizens, without trial. Southern District Judge Colleen McMahon called her ruling, which comes in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, "paradoxical" and likened it to "Alice in Wonderland." McMahon found yesterday in New York Times v. U.S. Department of Justice, 11 Civ. 9336, that the government is protected from turning over legal opinions pertaining to so-called targeted killing by various exceptions to the FOIA. The underlying FOIA requests came...

4000+ gays executed by current regime... Yeah, this is the fate that awaits any found 'guilty' of being homosexual in Iran: you know libs, the same Iran that's funneling all those weapons and missiles into Gaza to support equally barbaric proxy Hamas... More at Reaganite Republican (warning- gruesome/graphic) On the other hand, all are allowed to live in peace (unless hit by a Iranian-Palestinian missile) and democracy in Israel- yet which nation does the left hate the more than any other in the world...? (don't answer libs, it's rhetorical). Hey guys- looks like you missed one BBC   FoxNews   VermontSecession   Sarbaz.org  ...

BAMAKO - Tuareg rebels and Islamist militants have joined forces in northern Mali and say they will create an independent Islamist state. The groups took advantage of a military coup in Bamako to seize control of the territory in early April. Resistance is growing in the north to the efforts to introduce Islamic law. In the northern Malian town of Gao, court is in session. Commissioner Abdoulaye Maiga begins by reading from the Quran in the roadside courtyard outside the former police station. Once an area businessman, Maiga is a member of the militant Islamist sect Ansar Dine that residents...